Migrating To LinkTrust From Cake

Migrating To LinkTrust From Cake

1. Export all of your affiliate data from Cake. LinkTrust will import them into your new LinkTrust account. Each affiliate will be assigned a LinkTrust ID, however, Cake affiliate ID's can also be imported and associated to each affiliate.

2. Export all campaign information and creatives from Cake. If you have a technical crew within your organization, you can use LinkTrust API's to import the campaign and creative information into LinkTrust. If you do not have technical resources to use LinkTrust API's, each campaign can be manually created in LinkTrust. LinkTrust may have resources to assist in this process and an hourly fee may be applicable. You may also consider moving campaigns over a few at a time rather than all at once.

3. Assign your affiliates to the appropriate LinkTrust campaigns with any applicable payouts and pixels.

4. Place a LinkTrust pixel for each campaign onto the conversion page of your advertisers. This is the time to decide if you are going to use standard tracking pixels or server to server tracking (this depends on the advertiser). LinkTrust supports both types.

Note: Do not have your advertisers remove the old Cake pixel yet! Wait until after your Cake account is closed.

5. If you imported your Cake Affiliate IDs into LinkTrust with each affiliate, you can then place the appropriate LinkTrust click link into each campaign within Cake. This way, Cake traffic will begin redirecting through your LinkTrust campaigns and then on to your advertise's landing pages. Once these are in place, LinkTrust will begin tracking clicks and sales at the same time as your Cake account.

Note: when placing the LinkTrust click link into each Cake campaign as the landing page URL, ensure that the Cake affiliate ID is automatically appended to the LinkTrust click link as &AltID=[Cake_ID].

6. If you wish to transfer historical stats, LinkTrust allows you to make adjustments that reflect historical impressions, clicks, conversions and commissions within LinkTrust. You will not actually import any conversion or click data into LinkTrust, just top level totals per affiliate/campaign for each historical month. We suggest that you import your Cake monthly totals into the last day of each month within LinkTrust. If you do this, be sure you let your affiliates know.

If you wish to start your LinkTrust stats blank, be sure you still export all of your Cake stats for historical use.

7. When ready, announce to your affiliates via email from your LinkTrust account that they can begin logging into their new account and getting creatives with updated click links. You may want to give affiliates a timeframe of how long old Cake links will continue to work so that they can plan accordingly.

Other things to consider are customizing your Affiliate Center and getting LinkTrust training for your team.

Frequently Asked Questions:

1. Can my affiliates/publishers continue to use the same links from my Cake account?

Only while your Cake account is active. Once you close your Cake account, only LinkTrust links will work and LinkTrust links are formatted differently. This is why you should notify your affiliates to get updated links from your LinkTrust account.

2. Can't I switch over all at once and not take a month or so to do it?

Yes, however, the probability of having a problem and having no time to make adjustments or fixes increases. Also, getting affiliates to swap out their links all at the same time is not likely.